Welcome to Foundation Stage

Reading

Children learn to read at different rates in Foundation Stage. When your child enters school they

will be provided with a range of activities to support their development of reading skills. A lot of

the work the children undertake is learning through play, although there will be times when

children have directed tasks and activities to participate in.

All children will have a reading book or a shared book (a story to read and share). They will also

have a reading record book that stays in their school book bag. This book is for an open dialogue

between home and school to comment on your child’s reading.

We aim to hear children read once a week and their books will be changed accordingly. Children

will select their own books from the box at their level. Children will progress at their own rate

and will be given reading scheme books when they have good phonic skills to scaffold their

learning.

We would like children to share a wide range of books not just their ‘school’ books and this should

include non-fiction, magazines, stories and poems. Children should be encouraged to clock up as

many reading miles as they can!

aloud

Why is reading important at home?

Sharing books with your child is a means of

fostering a love of reading and an enthusiasm for

books.

As your child progresses, they need lots of praise

and encouragement from home and school.

Children need to know how proud you are of them

and that reading is not something just done at

school.

It is a time for parent and child to bond and have

special one to one time together.

It is a time to consolidate their knowledge and

skills in a loving, safe environment.

Get ready for reading:

Children recognise particular sounds in the environment. Listen for birds singing,

vehicles, animal sounds, water boiling, leaves rustling etc.

Children regularly sing nursery rhymes which are a key part of developing children’s

rhyme and rhythm.

Children can borrow a story sack from school and share stories and activities with

their families.

Model alliterative play with your child e.g. “I’ll have some peppery, pepperoni, pizza,

please!”

Make full use of i-pods, i-pads, story CDs, tablets to share stories, rhymes and songs.

Sing songs with claps, pats and stamps such as ‘Happy and You Know It.’

Add body percussion to rhymes, performing the sound of the beat and then add

movement.

Invest in some rhyming stories such as ‘Mr. Magnolia’ by Quentin Blake, ‘My Friend

Bear’ by Jez Alborough or ‘This is the Bear’ by Sarah Hayes and Helen Craig to name

but a few.

Encourage children to use their voices to make loud and soft noises, high and low

sounds, scary voices, singing voices and add voices of characters when you are reading

to them.

Clarify points and review

questions

Discuss story: sequence

plot characters, setting

Phonics

What is synthetic Phonics?

Synthetic phonics is the synthesizing or blending of sounds to make a word.

Phonics is a method of teaching children how spoken words are composed of sounds called phonemes

and how the letters in words correspond to those phonemes. The process of reading involves decoding

or ‘breaking’ words into separate phonemes, so that meaning can be gained. On the other hand, the

process of spelling requires the writer to identify all the phonemes in a word and then use their

knowledge of the phonemic code to write or ‘make’ the word.

English is essentially a code that can be encoded (written) and decoded (read). We need to teach

children this code with as much emphasis as possible on the rules and regularities of the written

language.

Synthetic phonics is a fun, fast and exciting way to learn our sounds.

Phonics

Phonics at Western

Within school we follow the DFE’s Letters and Sounds programme supported by Jolly Phonics. We

take a synthetic approach to teaching early phonics.

It is essential that children say the 44 phonemes (letter sounds) of the alphabet correctly. For help

with this try:

http://www.mrthorne.com/44phonemes/

To support their learning, Jolly Phonics has actions to go with each letter sound. This movement

associated with each letter shape helps them to remember the letter sound.

The exact order the sounds are taught in school and the actions can be found in appendix 1. A

breakdown of phonics terms can be found in appendix 2.

Useful resources

www.jollylearning.co.uk – Official Jolly Phonics website

www.mrthorne.com- Great clips for teaching letter sounds

www.lettersandsounds.com – Free phonics games online (start with phase 1 or 2)

Blending to read

Blending and Segmenting

Right from the start we want children to put the sounds together to read a word..

We use sound buttons to teach the blending of sounds.

The children will be shown a word e.g.

The teacher will sound out the phonemes within the word to make the word.

Key words

As part of learning to read the children will receive word walls which display key

words for the children to learn. Some of these words they will be able to decode

phonetically and some the children will just need to learn, we call these words ‘tricky

words’.

To help your child learn these words it is essential that they see them written in books,

on cards, made with magnetic letters etc. Play snap type games, memory games,

matching games to help consolidate their learning.

Writing

Children are encouraged to write and make marks on entry to school. We value all marks

that children make and actively encourage all kinds of mark making. Children learn the

value of writing by applying it to real life situations so within our provision, there are lots of

opportunities to write, ideas include:

Writing shopping lists, cards and invitations in the home corner,

Writing a list of supplies for the builders in the construction area,

Writing parking tickets and speeding fines outside with the bikes,

Taking telephone messages in the office,

Writing a report to record an incident that has happened.

Children’s early mark making may start to look like a series of squiggles and marks.

Writing

We call this emergent writing.

Gradually these emergent marks will progress and you may start to see some letter shapes. These often

start with the letters in a child’s name.

Children should be encouraged to talk about their marks and their writing and tell you what it says. As

children’s phonological awareness increases, they will start to use their letter knowledge to sound out

simple words.

Writing

Children should be encouraged to talk about their marks and their writing and tell you

what it says. As children’s phonological awareness increases, they will start to use their

letter knowledge to sound out simple words.

Handwriting

Children are taught to form letters correctly from starting school. All our letters have flicks

on the end of them to help them join their letters when they are ready.

This is the correct letter formation for right-handed children.

Handwriting

This is the correct letter formation for left-handed children.

Maths

In Foundation Stage your child needs to learn to:

Count, read and recognise numbers to 5, then 10, then 20,

Write numbers to 20,

Be able to count out accurately a group of objects to 5, then 10 and then 20,

Begin to add two groups, or take away groups beginning to use the language of addition and

subtraction,

To be able to say one more than and one less than a number,

To begin to record simple number sentences,

To name and identify the properties of 2D and 3D shapes,

To be able to talk about measures in length, time and weight,

Count in twos, fives and tens,

Count backwards from 10,

To be able to share amounts and begin practical division problems.

Extensions could also include:

Recognise read and write numbers to 100,

Begin to record addition and subtraction problems to 20+,

To use a number line to record their addition and subtraction,

To know number bonds to 10 and then 20 e.g. 5+5=10, 6+4=10, 8+2=10.

E.L.F. (Effective Learners Forever)

As part of our curriculum at Western, we are teaching the children to be

effective learners forever. Our classrooms display a beanstalk which will

have skills we are working on displayed with links to the Early Years

Foundation Stage Curriculum. Skills focussed on in Early Years are:

Independence,

Communication,

Listening,

Collaborating,

Problem Solving.

Signposts

Your child will be given some signposts. These signposts outline areas in which

your child needs to work. These will include a Maths, Literacy and ELF area for

development.

The children are assessed at the end of each half term to see if they have met

their signposts.

Appendix 2

Definitions

Phoneme- the smallest unit of sound in a word. A phoneme you hear.

Grapheme- the letter that represents the sound. A grapheme you see.

Graph- one letter, one sound.

Digraph- two letters making one sound e.g. sh, ch, th etc.

Trigraph- three letters making one sound e.g. igh, dge

Split digraph- Where the two letters are not adjacent e.g. a-e in face, cake etc.